Stefan Mileschin

Chipzilla boffins have emerged from their smoke filled labs claiming to have created another monster and defied God and common decency by making a 14nm IC.

Managing director for northern Europe Pat Bliemer told Nordic Hardware, that Intel has cracked the 14nm process producing ICs in its laboratories.

While this is a long way off from ever turning up under the bonnet of a gadget you might own, it does indicate that Intel is closer to the successor process generation to 22nm.

The 22nm is expected to be in the shops next year and Bliemer said that the discovery means Intel will have have the next generation after 22nm running. Intel boffins can now go ahead and produce 14nm products.

Malcolm Penn, CEO of Future Horizons was quoted by Electronics Weekly as saying that the announcement will be sending executives from AMD and GloFo rushing to the bogs to relieve the contents of their bowels, or words to that effect.

AMD and GloFo have still not quite got their heads around the 32/28nm node transition, and this announcement means that their technology is about three to four years behind Intel.

Penn said that such a state is really tricky for a chipmaker to recover from and AMD's key foundry is on the ropes.

TSMC, which is still lagging Intel by a couple of years, or Samsung are AMD's only hope right now. Although Samsung is also lagging behind TSMC in logic, thanks to being hamstrung by the Common Alliance technology mistakes, Penn said.

It is starting to look like the IBM club's gate first approach at 28nm is looking pretty dumb. Bliemer himself puts Intel's lead at one and a half nodes ahead of AMD.

http://news.techeye.net/chips/intel-...cs-in-its-labs